Montana Public Radio looks into the reasons for the delays in air tanker contracts

Edward O’Brien, a reporter with Montana Public Radio conducted interviews with three people about the reasons for the protests and delays in awarding the exclusive use contracts for another seven next-generation air tankers. He talked with Ron Hooper, CEO of Neptune Aviation; Tom Harbour, Fire Director for the U.S. Forest Service; and Bill Gabbert, of Fire Aviation.

Mr. O’Brien’s commentary and snippets from the audio interviews can be heard at the Montana Public Radio website, where you can also read the transcript, a portion of which is below:

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“A contract dispute has created uncertainty and potential lost revenue for the companies that supply firefighting air tankers, including Missoula’s Neptune Aviation.

The conflict is over long-term contracts for jet engine, so-called “next generation” planes that bring more to the table than the Korean War-era prop-driven tankers firefighters have been using for decades.

“These are larger, faster aircraft capable of carrying at least 3,000 gallons of retardant and (flying) at least 300 miles per hour, designed to better take the stresses and strains of what we ask these airtankers to do these days.”

That’s Tom Harbour, Forest Service Director of Fire and Aviation Management. The agency currently has at least six “next generation” tankers ready to go this fire season and hoped to have up to another seven planes contracted for by now.

Details of those complaints filed with the Government Accountability Office aren’t public.

The managing editor of fireaviation.com, Bill Gabbert, says those protests have since been amended.

“It slows things down a bit. The GAO has 100 days in order to adjudicate these protests, but when a company files an amendment and then later, another amendment, that throws a monkey wrench into the proceedings.”

The GAO is now forced to go back to square one.

“And I’ve talked to a representative of GAO who told me that they’re probably going to need the entire 100 days in order to figure out what’s going on with these protests. That puts it into the middle or the end of July,” Gabbert says.

Chris, be sure you don’t mix apples and oranges. There are two contracts up for discussion:

1. The Next-Gen 2.0. This contract has not been awarded, therefore, there are no beneficiaries. The contract was protested by two companies, Erickson and Coulson, over the terms of the contract before the USFS announced the names of any companies that would be receiving contracts.

2. Call When Needed. This contract has been awarded, and amazingly, there were no protests. Not yet, anyway — but it’s only been out four or five days, so who knows what will happen. Coulson received one of these CWN contracts but Erickson did not. We don’t know if Erickson submitted a bid on this contract.

From what I’ve heard on the flightlines, certain Loads Monitoring equipment was made a contract requirement. That equipment however, is unavailable from the FS. So the FS says, you need to have this equipment, but there’s nowhere to get it, so you’re out of luck.